The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-02-17
THE PHOSPHATE BEDS OF BEAUFORT
The Great Industry of the South Carolina
Coast-T-he brotherhood Dredge.

The Great Industry of the South Carolina
Coast-The Brotherhood Dredge.
The phosphate beds make the great in
ustry of Beaufort, as of most of the coast
outhwest Of Stone ferry; and as all the
negroes average 81 Il day in cash earnings,
ST can do so if they want TO work, their
general condition is good. A satisfactory
Explanation Of these phosphate deposits
sas not been worked out, and it is some
hing of a problem, as the geology of
south Carolina jumps all the intermediate
ages between archaan and tertiary In
she piedmont section Of the state the azoic
locks stand out sharp and abrupt from
The hills and line the channels Of the many
bright and swiftly flowing streams of that
region. a little further down the slope
The drift covers these rocks and they are
still there;and the excavations at COlum bia
bring out a horde of blue and fecked
granite A little lower, there is, in popu-
ar language, mo bedrock" At Orange
burg they bored LOO feet for artesian
water, and found drift all the way down.
slay, sand and mari.
Still coming down the slope, one reaches
1 point where the sand has travelled so far
rom its original matrix in the Blue ridge
That it is completely triturated, and the
nils have no consistency. ;.AlOng this line,
At an average distance of perhaps sixty
miles from the coast, is a line of sand hills
which seem to have been shaped by the
wind and below them is the broad, fiat,
generally unhealthful, "low country"
where the purple and chOcolate-colored
streams flow slUggishly over Shiny bot
toms, between muddy banks shrouded by
The funeral moss, And yet on the sea-
ward side Of this tract, in the bottom Of
the creeks and inlets, but occasionally ex-
Fending a long distance inland, is the phos-
phate rock
1t was known to be of some value as
early as 1856. but nothing was done to
develop it until the reconstruction legisla-
lure Oh 1868 chartered a company to work
t. Since then the companies have paid
oyalty to the state for all they took out OF
Aaylgable waters or from state land, and
last year the state received S175, 900 from
mat source. AS much was taken from
private lands, the yield must have ex-
Deeded 200,O 600 tons. The supply is practi-
sally inexhaustible, as the strata wherever
pierced are over twenty feet thick; and in
many places 1t is known that successive
strata is Superimposed with dirt between.
When first mined the rock is dark gray or
nearly black; after being washed and
ground it is a lighter gray. The COM
mercial article sell at So to 80 per ton, and
It Is expected that the total yield Of the
state this year viii be worth over 81, 500,
800
A great impulse has been given the work
lately by the Brotherhood dredge-the in
qentiOn Of Samuel BrotherhOOd-Which
takes up the rock by thirty-six iron scoop
buckets, running on aXles, somewhat in
the style of the endless platform Of horse
power. In the original rock are sharks
teeth and fish bones of many kinds, which,
/ suppose, with the phosphate of lime,
make it valuable as a fertilizer. In front
Of where l write are two steam dredges at
work; across the point are extensive
works on the land, and elsewhere in the
place are large establishments. A few
negroes still follow the old system of wad.
ing in the shallow creeks and carrying out
such detached pieces of the rock as they
can handle.-"Parke" in Chicago Tines.